I'm A Fan by Sheena Patel - Review

I kept seeing this book earlier in the year when I had vouchers to spend, and I so nearly picked it up more than once, but for some reason I didn't. Then it was 99p on Kindle so I bought it, and I finally read it a couple of weeks ago. I'm glad I didn't pay full price for it, but I did like it. I think basically this book isn't for me, in my life stage - and that's okay. 

It is a novella, it isn't told linearly, and it's more little vignettes of life than actually a narrative. The heroine is never named, but she is a woman of colour and seems to be youngish, maybe thirty at most. She has been in an on off thing with the man she calls 'the man I want to be with'. She never names him. He's older than her, he seems to be in a position of some power over her, and he is married. He has been married for more than two decades and proclaims to not be in love with her, but says he can't leave her. Our heroine knows her name and has even bumped into her on occasion, but she is obsessed with another woman that the man she wants to be with has been seeing.

She even calls her 'the woman I am obsessed with'. She spends hours refreshing her instagram, and seems to think that she isn't sufficiently happy with the man (who is quite a terrible man). There are also parts where she rails against racism, sexism, colonialism, and so on. I liked these bits but I thought they were a bit jarring in the whole. 

I do think this is a very literary book and I'm glad I read it, even if I didn't love it. I am still giving it four out of five because I'm glad it exists. 

A Mansion for Murder by Frances Brody - Review

 

I picked up this book when I went to a crime writing conference in Leeds in June 2023. I hadn't read anything else by Frances Brody before but I was intrigued by the blurb so I bought the book. It's taken me until now to pick it up, but I'm glad I did! It's the thirteenth book in the Kate Shackleton series and clearly I've read none of them, but I didn't find that that was a hindrance to reading the book. I feel like I learnt enough about Kate to understand her and understand the book. 

This book is set in 1930 and I understand the rest are set in the 1920s, which is a really lovely time setting, I like this for detective books. Kate lives in Leeds and I liked the descriptions of parts of Leeds that I know but which were so different a hundred years ago. This book is mostly set in Saltaire, though, which is a place I don't know well but have been a few times. I love reading books set in places I know! It just makes me feel happy. This is a proper cosy mystery and it was perfect to read in the November dark, I think. If you don't know Saltaire, it's a model village built by Sir Titus Salt around the mill, which still exists and which is huge. It's near Bradford. 

So Kate receives a letter from a young man called Ronnie Creswell. He says he has information for her about Salts Mill in Saltaire. She makes plans to go and meet him there. But when she gets there, he's dead. His colleague David has found his body in the reservoir below the mill (who knew mills had reservoirs... not me, apparently) and at first thinks he has been drowned. But his body shows that he had been killed - but who would kill him? 

There are a few different strands to the book. Firstly, there's the mill itself, and the owners and workers there. The owner is having some difficulties with competitors, and needs Kate's colleague, Jim Sykes, to go a bit undercover to see what he can uncover there. The owner's daughter, Pamela, was in a secret relationship with Ronnie and although there were class differences between them, it seems like the owner (whose name I've forgotten, clearly) wanted to bring Ronnie on to the board and train him up, and wasn't completely against the match. His wife, though, was. Pamela is devastated by his death. 

Then there's the mansion. Nick Creswell, aka Old Nick, remembers the building of the mansion. At the time, he was living with his grandma and there were stories about a young shepherdess who was pushed down the well. He finds a bone that they think belongs to her, and he buries it near where they're building the new mansion. Not too long later, his is walking one day when his teacher, Miss Mason, suffers a stillbirth on the path. She asks him to bury the baby, which he does. He keeps this secret for years and years. In the book, he is an old man and losing his marbles a bit, so people aren't sure what to believe of what he says.

There is believed to be a curse on the mansion. Many owners have lived there and moved out. Kate and Mrs Sugden, her assistant, end up living in the Tower while investigating Ronnie's murder, but everyone in the village is suspicious of the place. 

I liked the book generally and would read more in the series. My one criticism really is that there were a few places where the book hadn't been proof read properly - Ronnie was alive again at one point! But I'm giving this four out of five and I did like it. 

The Cloisters by Katy Hays - Review

I bought this book earlier in the year I think, with a Waterstones voucher I had. It was on buy one get one half price and I liked the premise of it, so I picked it up. I really DID like the blurb, but I didn't really gel with the story and it took me ages to read. I think the execution just wasn't great. 

So, Ann Stilwell is from the Walla Walla in Washington state. She has been a student at Whitman university and is trying to get into grad school, but she has had a ton of rejections. Her dad was a professor at the college but was killed when Ann was still in high school. Through him through she learnt about translating and became interested in the early Renaissance, which is now her area of study. She is desperate to get out of Walla Walla even though her mother doesn't want her to go. She has a job at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, so she rents a small studio flat and moves the entire way across the country to New York City.

However, when she arrives she is told that the man who was supposed to be her mentor has gone to Germany or something to study, so there is no job for her. But then she is saved by Patrick. He is the curator of a museum linked to the Met called The Cloisters. He is desperate for a helper and takes Ann with him. He introduces her to his underling, Rachel, who Ann sort of already knows. At the museum there is also Leo, who is a gardener. The whole place is very cloistered and very claustrophobic. Patrick brings Ann into his confidence eventually about his work. He thinks that tarot cards were used in Italy in the Renaissance which would prove that they were used earlier than has been previously thought. 

At the beginning of the book you get told there is a body, but it's not obvious who the body belongs to until the middle of the book. Ann and Rachel become close, but Rachel is really only into herself and what she wants. She's an ambitious young woman but she also has a lot of past history and Ann doesn't know whether to trust her or not. Ann discovers something that she and Rachel decide to keep from Patrick, thinking that he will steal their research and be known as the main author of anything they publish, just because he is a lot older, more established, and a man. I did agree with them on this, to be fair. 

I felt like there was just a lot of flim flam in the book. It needed cutting a lot I think. The setting is really creepy - the New York summer is incredibly hot and that claustrophobia really carries through the whole book. I liked Ann but thought she was naive. I was hoping that there would be some kind of twist at the end which made the run up to it worth it. There is a twist, but it didn't quite make it worth it for me. I'm giving this three out of five. 

Ice Lolly by Jean Ure - Review

 

After I read Lemonade Sky by Jean Ure recently I was intrigued by what else she had written, because I hadn't even heard of her but I really liked the book. So I bought Ice Lolly on eBay for a few quid. I really liked it, too, so I've reserved a few more of Jean's books at the library. They're really cute middle grade books and I've found them really joyful to read. 

The hero of this book is Laurel. She is about twelve years old. Her mother has just died and we actually meet Laurel at her mum's funeral. She is with her mum's brother, Uncle Mark, and his wife, Auntie Ellen. She can't cry and in fact she has decided that she won't cry. She will become Ice Lolly. She has to go and live with Mark and Ellen and their children Michael and Holly. With her, she takes her mum's beloved books, and their cat, Mr Pooter. Ellen clearly hates cats and is resentful of the fact that Laurel has to live with them at all. 

Laurel tries to fit in but she just can't seem to get things right. She starts Michael's school and is actually in his class, but she struggles to find any friends. She becomes friendly with the librarin, Mrs Caton, and finds a home in the library. She has read a lot of books, including Diary of a Nobody, from where Mr Pooter's name comes. She wishes that she could have stayed with her and mum's neighbour, Stevie, who loves cats but hates people. Mr Pooter is old and keeps being sick in Laurel's bedroom, which she hides from Ellen. Holly is a proper brat, honestly she's a nightmare. Poor Laurel just gets more and more desperate.

Like Lemonade Sky, I feel like the ending came very quickly here which did kind of annoy me. But I did really like the book and loved Laurel so much. I'm giving this four out of five. 

Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin - Review

I have seen so many of my friends rave over Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin and I do have it on my shelves, but I haven't got round to it yet. But then I added this to my wishlist and someone bought it for me in a book swap. I was looking at the piles (plural... there's four) of books by the bed and plucked this out. And I'm really glad I did! I really enjoyed the book and will have to pick up Tomorrow quicker than I might otherwise have done. 

I didn't realise this was published in 2005 though! That's decades ago and in Young Adult fiction that really makes a difference. I do think this is a pretty timeless book, though, which is good. YA can date really badly but I'm glad that hasn't happened here. 

So, Liz is fifteen, nearly sixteen, and she wakes up on a boat. Her cabinmate, Thandi, is a little older than her. And they are both dead. They are on the way to Elsewhere, which is a bit like heaven but functions a lot like earth, too. It takes Liz a while to work out that she's dead. She was knocked off her bicycle by a taxi driver and killed. Thandi was shot in the head. They arrive at Elsewhere and Liz is greeted by her grandmother, Betty, who died before she was born. 

But in Elsewhere, everyone ages backwards, until they finally become a baby again, and then they go back to earth to begin their lives again. So Betty, while she died aged fifty, is now around thirty four years old. Liz goes to live with her. She doesn't find it easy to be dead, though. She becomes obsessed with going to the Observation Decks, from where she can watch her family. She misses her mum, dad, and brother Alvy. She needs to have a job - an avocation - but she just feels too much like she's missed out on life - on love, on growing up, on going to prom. 

The book is quite sad, as I'm sure it should be, but it's quite hopeful and lovely too. I liked Liz and found her reactions really believable. I really liked the premise of this book and think it was dealt with well. I'm giving it four out of five. 

Making A Killing by Cara Hunter - Review

As you may know, I really like Cara Hunter's books, especially the DI Adam Fawley series. In fact I've read all of them, and periodically I check Netgalley to see if another book has been put there. For ages there hasn't been any, sadly. But then I got an email from HarperCollins offering me the chance to read this brand new book in the series. I was so pleased and of course said yes immediately, and then picked this up just a couple of weeks later. 

I was provided with an electronic copy of this book for review purposes, but was not otherwise compensated for this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own. 

When I read the premise for this book I couldn't believe what I was reading! Way back in the first book, reviewed here on this blog, Daisy Mason went missing. She was eight years old and her body was never found, but her mother Sharon is currently serving a life sentence for the murder of her daughter. The next few books took place over only a couple of years. We were last in Oxford with Adam in 2018, when his new baby daughter Lily was only a few months old. I did wonder at that time what Cara would do to jump forward in time, as that book was written in 2022. Well, wonder no more. 

It's 2024. Adam's team has been disbanded; he is working in counter terrorism or something. Quinn is in uniform high up somewhere. Erica Somer is working with young victims in the court system. But the gang is getting back together, because... 

There are new cops around too, in Gloucestershire. They include Triona Bradley, who I really liked - I would like to see more from her in future for sure. A dog walker (it's always the dog walkers) finds a body in a shallow grave near an old oak tree that has a gruesome history to do with witchcraft. The police don't know who the woman who has been killed is, but the duct tape that has been used to tie her up contains a hair. And that hair belongs to Daisy Mason. 

She is therefore still alive, and would be now sixteen. Adam is called to Gloucestershire to head up reopening the case and going back over everything that the team thought they knew back in 2016. (Cara acknowledges herself that this would never have been allowed to happen, but let's go with it for the sake of storytelling). Quinn and Everett are back. They have to find out where Daisy has been and of course, they have to tell Sharon that she's innocent - as she's always protested - and release her from prison. 

Meanwhile Bradley and co are on with finding out who the body in the grave is, as well as trying to find out how she is related to Daisy and Daisy's case. I liked the story but found Daisy a little bit OTT in some ways. I did have to suspend my belief a few times, but I found it compelling. I did also think there were just a couple too many characters which made it sometimes hard to keep track of who was who. But in all I liked the book and am giving it four out of five. 

Wild Strawberries by Angela Thirkell - Review

I had never even heard of Angela Thirkell but I came across this book in a charity shop in Wales over the summer, where it was 50p. There was another by her, too, so I bought both and thought I would take a chance on them! I ended up really liking this and would read more in the series too. Oh, upon looking, it turns out that I bought the first one in the series on Kindle back in April. It was probably 99p or something so I often take chances on books when they're so cheap. So I will have to get to that soon! 

I will say first off that someone uses the n word in this book, which I found shocking as it's not a word I have ever used. I understand that the book was written in 1934, but it wasn't right then, either. I also understand the reasons behind keeping it intact, but even so, to modern ears that word is just gross and I want to warn for it up front. 

The family at the heart of the novel is the Leslies. The matriarch, Emily, is a Lady (I think because her father is or was an Earl? But the intricacies of the British aristocracy are lost on me. Suffice to say, she's very posh, and her husband is less posh, although still posh) and her husband owns cattle that are sent to South America. They have four children - the eldest is killed in World War One and leaves behind a son, Martin, who is fifteen at the beginning of the novel, then there's John, a widower, Agnes, happily married to Robert, who doesn't appear in the book, and then David. David is only a few years older than Martin so the two of them get on famously. They live in a big house near the vicarage in the village which I believe Thirkell uses in this series. The vicar is renting out this house to a French family for a couple of months over the summer, which becomes relevant later in the book. 

Emily is totally scatty, and used to having her whole family trail around her and generally sort out her stuff. Agnes is visiting for a few months with her children. She dotes on them and excuses all their bad behaviour. She is also scatty and just a bit drifty in life. John works in the City but comes down every now and then. His wife died a few years ago and while he is still young enough to find someone else, he hasn't so far. David is a bit of a cad - he is rakish and good looking and young and rich, so he has quite a few women falling over him.

Into this comes Mary. She is Agnes' niece by marriage and she's around 23. She falls for David, but he treats her quite badly. There a lot of farce and misunderstanding. The book as a whole is very funny which I really liked. There are so many people and so much coming and going, but it's only a short book and it's just hilarious. I'm giving this five out of five because I really liked it. 

A Darker Domain by Val McDermid - Review

As you may have seen previously, I started reading the Karen Pirie series of books by Val McDermid. I bought the first one and really enjoyed it, and then I passed it on to my mum who really enjoyed it too. So I made a list of all the Karen Pirie novels and picked up a couple of them on eBay. My mum and I both read the fourth one in the series, Out of Bounds back in September, but she got annoyed at reading them out of order. But I had already bought this one on Kindle for only about 99p, so I told my mother to either do the same or go to the library. Or buy it herself, I guess! Don't complain at me about it! 

Anyway I had this on Kindle so I went to it and I liked it. There are two strands to the story and it isn't clear to begin with how the two will match up, but I knew they would. 

In the first strand, a man is reported missing, only he went missing in late 1984 and by this time it's over twenty years later (the book was published in 2008, and set I think in 2007). He was a striking miner called Mick, living in a small pit village. He had a wife and child. It was believed that he went to Nottingham to work, to become a scab and betray the strike. Five men from the area also did this on the same night, so his wife and child believed he had gone there. They became pariahs in the village and haven't really had an easy time of it. Now, Michelle's child is seriously ill and his only hope of survival is to find a donor. Hence why Michelle is looking for her dad. But she can't find him and so reports him missing. Karen takes the report and although she's supposed to be looking at a different case, she is intrigued by this one and starts to look into what might have happened to Mick that night in December 1984. 

Meanwhile, a journalist called Bel is on holiday in Tuscany with some friends. She goes for a run one morning and goes into an abandoned and delapidated villa. There is a large blood stain on the floor in the kitchen. And then she finds a silk screen print of a poster with marionettes on it. She recognises it as a poster that was used in a ransom note in 1985. The daughter of local millionaire Brodie was kidnapped, alongside her baby son. Brodie and his wife arranged to meet her and the kidnappers and hand over the ransom, but it went wrong and Catriona ended up dead and her child Adam was never seen again. The poster being in the villa would link the people who had been squatting there to the kidnapping, but who were they? Bel approaches Brodie, hoping to be able to make a lot of money off the story. They try to keep the police out of it but Karen gets called anyway. But Brodie is used to being able to bend the police to his will, and he isn't forthcoming with what happened in 1985. 

I did really like the story and I felt like it came together really well. But I did think there were a few too many characters - many of whom were also known by aliases, which ended up confusing. I wish a few people could have been cut out and then it would have flowed better for me. It was hard to keep everyone straight in my head. 

But I thought this was a good second book in the series and I'm giving it four out of five. 

Hostage by Clare Mackintosh - Review

I can't remember where I picked this book up. I can see the Waterstones sticker so maybe it was in fact there, but I don't remember it. But it was in the piles of books next to my bed, so I got round to it. I liked the blurb but in the eventuality, this book didn't quite make it for me. It's over complicated and it really drags in parts. 

So Mina and Adam used to be a couple, but they're separated currently. They have a five year old daughter, Sophia, who is adopted. She is very much attached to Mina but Adam struggles with her and struggles to bond with her. Adam is a police officer. Mina is a flight attendant. She was training to be a pilot when she was younger but had to drop out and instead trained as a flight attendant. She loves it and thinks it's important for Sophia to know that she will go away, but she will come back too. 

The airline Mina works for is about to launch the first non stop flight between London and Sydney, and thanks to the problems in her marriage, Mina has swapped shifts with someone to get herself on the flight. Everything starts off well, but then Mina is passed a note: either she gets one of the passengers into the flight deck, in a hijack situation, or they will kill Sophia. Mina doesn't doubt them, but she doesn't know who she can trust. 

Meanwhile, Adam and Sophia run into trouble with their babysitter at home. Mina thinks that Adam had an affair with their previous au pair, Katya, so fired her. Their babysitter Becca has seemed too good to be true... Adam is mired in his own shit and he needed support from Mina that he didn't really get. I liked Mina but I felt she was a bit self involved and too obsessed with Sophia, but there we go. 

Then there are short passages from some of the passengers, and it's not clear why until a little way through the book. I sort of did like the mystery of this, but it got a bit confusing as to who was who. It was obvious that there was a lot research into flying an aeroplane, being a flight attendant, and so on, so I did appreciate that part of the book. I also thought the deaths were well done. It's a locked room mystery really isn't it, only thirty five thousand feet in the sky. 

But something just didn't ring quite right for me. I found Adam annoying and his and Mina's relationship annoying. I feel like if they'd just talked about things they could have sorted it out. I found Adam's story back in the UK while Mina was in the air just boggling and kind of annoying too. In all I'm giving this three out of five and I wouldn't going rushing for something else by the same author. 

Heartbreak Boys by Simon James Green - Review

I don't remember now where I picked this book up, but I think it might have been in one of the queer bookshops that I've been to fairly recently. It must be one of the only books by Simon James Green that I didn't own, so I was happy to buy it. I kept meaning to pick it up and I eventually did towards the end of October. Again I was trying to read something easy after The Book of Lost & Found and this fitted the bill and I was happy to enjoy one of Simon's books again. I love how he puts so much humour in his books, alongside a lot of touching parts and some pathos. 

This novel has a dual narrative. First of all there's Jack. Jack is out and proud, hugely camp, and going out with Dylan, who is captain of the football team. Jack was bullied when younger, but now, in Year 11, he isn't because he's going out with Dylan. It's their prom, and Jack wants to go all out, and he thinks they're in with a good chance of winning prom king and queen, too. But Dylan really wants Jack to tone it down somewhat. He's kind of embarrassed by Jack, and really clearly does not deserve him at all. 

Nate is quiet, a bit shy, he sort of fades into the background. He's giving a speech at prom, though, and he has decided that he will use the opportunity to come out. He has been seeing Tariq, but it's been a secret. Tariq has been trying to push Nate out, though, and Nate thinks he will appreciate this grand gesture of Nate coming out in front of the entire school. So he does it, and everyone is watching, but then Jack notices a look between Dylan and Tariq, and realises that he and Nate have both been cheated on... 

So everything blows up. Jack is upset, but he is determined to not show it. Dylan and Tariq immediately become the like hashtag couple goals and they head off on holiday and this amazing life together. Nate is really upset. Jack goes over to see him. The two of them used to be friends but when Jack came out Nate distanced himself and they haven't really spoken since. Clearly this was because Nate was struggling with his own sexuality, but it means they aren't really friends. 

Nate's parents want to take him and his sister, Rosie, who is hilarious, on a camping trip in their clapped out camper van. Nate's dad has had a bad year and has lost his job and a good friend, so he needs some headspace. I actually really loved these details because parents have difficult lives too! Jack gets himself an invite and he decides they will start an instagram called HeartbreakBoys and they will have the best summer ever!

But the best laid plans and so on... 

I really enjoyed this book, it's fun and funny. I'm giving it four out of five. 

Lemonade Sky by Jean Ure - Review

My friend Helen sent me this book a few months ago. She sent a little care package to me at some point, and it included this. She knows I like Young Adult and middle grade literature, and she thought I would like this. I picked it up when I finally finished The Book of Lost & Found, and I fortunately read it really quickly which was joyful because I had really slogged through that last book. 

This book is a perfect middle grade book, in my opinion. It deals with some really difficult themes, but in a gentle way - but also a really realistic way. This IS the life that some kids are living and I love that. 

So Ruby is twelve years old and in Year 8 at high school. She has two sisters - Tizz who is ten, and Sam, who is almost six. They live in a basement flat with their mum. She has bipolar disorder. She has pills to take and usually she's okay, but the family is in poverty and struggling at the best of times. Sometimes Mum falls into a huge depression and can't get out of bed, meaning Ruby has to look after her sisters. And then there was the time that she disappeared for ten days... 

And now she's done that again. Ruby wakes up and her mother is nowhere to be found. She knows that she has to get all of them to school, and they have to make sure that their upstairs neighbour, who dislikes the family at the best of times, doesn't find out that their mother isn't around. Because if she does, they'll end up split up and in care, and Ruby cannot let that happen.

They cobble together what money they have and go to Tesco to buy food for themselves. It's nearly Sam's birthday and Ruby can't bear the idea of her having no party food. Ruby only has a couple of friends at school and she can't tell them too much, but her friend Nina comes through for her. I loved their fledgling friendship and would love to see more of it. 

Tizz is certain that their mum will be back after ten days. They just have to keep going and keep themselves together. 

My only criticism is that I felt like the ending happened very quickly. I do kind of get that from a storytelling point of view, because the more interesting part is at the beginning, really, when the girls are struggling to look after themselves. But it did all happen quickly at the end and I would have appreciated just a little bit less of the beginning and a little bit more of the ending. 

I'm giving this four out of five and I liked it so much that I bought another book by the same author - who I've never even heard of before - from eBay, and am looking forward to reading that soon! 

The Book of Lost and Found by Lucy Foley - Review

As you may know, I've read the more recent novels by Lucy Foley which are all crime thrillers, and I've enjoyed them, so when I realised she had written a few books before her crime ones I decided to reserve one at the library to see what it was like. I then took this on holiday and it's true that I didn't have much time to read while I was away, but also, I just found this book so overblown and just way too long that it really annoyed me. Every time I thought it was almost about to finish, something else would happen and someone else would have something terrible happen to them. It's just a lot. 

Kate is thirty something and her mother, Jane, has been dead for only about a year, and then Jane's adoptive mother Evelyn has just died too. Jane was a famous dancer and Evelyn sort of adopted her when she was little and got her into dancing. Kate is a photographer. Before she died, Evelyn gave Kate a portrait of a woman by a lake, which is signed with the initials TS. Along with it was a letter from a woman called Celia, saying she was Jane's birth mother and that she wanted to reconcile with her. Evelyn concealed this from Jane and Kate, and is only now coming clean. 

Kate thinks that the artist might be Thomas Stafford, so she starts out by asking his sister, and eventually gets in touch with the elusive artist. She ends up on Corsica at his house, alongside his grandson, Oliver. Oliver is clearly unhappy that she's there, but Stafford wants to tell the story of his life, and his love affair with Alice, who is the person calling herself Celia in the letter. 

His family were on a trip to Cornwall when they met Alice's family, who were aristocracy and had a manor on the beach or whatever. Thomas and Alice were then very small, but they meet later when Thomas is at Oxford, in the 1920s. Alice is clever but not permitted to go to university by her cold and somewhat unloving mother. Thomas and Alice have a strong friendship that eventually turns to an affair, and he did indeed do lots of portraits of her. She ends up in Paris in the thirties, living a bohemian life even as Nazism grows and World War Two sits on the horizon. 

As I say, it's just too long. I'd have liked it to lose two hundred pages and at least a couple of the strands of what happens. Alice leads an interesting life and so does Thomas, but god listening to them both recount their entire lives was just dull. I'm giving this three stars and honestly I think that is a bit generous. 

How To Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin - Review

Thank you so much to Quercus books for giving me access to this book! It seemed right up my alley so I was really looking forward to reading it. I was provided with an electronic copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I was not otherwise compensated for this post and all thoughts and opinions are my own. 

There are two strands of narrative in the book. In the first, Frances Adams is seventeen. It is 1965 and she has two good friends - Emily and Rose - and a boyfriend. There are three lads the girls hang around with. The girls visit a fortune teller, and she tells Frances that she will be murdered, and that the bird will betray her, and that she should be aware of the queen in her hand, or something like that. Emily's surname is Sparrow and she does end up betraying Frances, so Frances deeply believes the fortune teller. She becomes obsessed over the next few years - and indeed her life - about solving her own murder before it even happens. 

She changes her will to exclude her niece and instead to include her great niece, Annie. Annie and her mother live in a family house in a posh part of London. Annie has sent some of Frances' belongings to her in her posh house in the countryside, in this tiny town, and Frances asks Annie to visit. Annie's mum is an impoverished artist so she and Annie are lucky to live in such a fancy house, but I digress. Annie has never met Frances but she goes on to the small town to meet Frances. She meets with the solicitor - one of the boyfriends from the sixties - and they head to Frances' house. She married the local lord of the manor which explains why she's so rich. 

And she's now dead. It seems like the fortune teller's warning did eventually come true. Her nephew Sebastian and his grabby wife think everything will be left to them, but actually Frances' will is a strange one. Either Annie or Sebastian must solve the murder, or the house and land will be sold to developers to become a housing estate. Clearly this is going to go down like a bucket of cold sick in the town, and it means Annie and her mum would lose their house in London too. 

Annie sets about solving the murder, but she comes up against absolutely everyone. The house isn't safe for her. She doesn't know who she can trust and who she can't. Oliver, the estate agent, seems out to sabotage her. The local police officer is a total dish but he won't want Annie to show him up and solve the crime before him... 

I did generally like the book but I think that there were too many characters and it needed whittling down a bit. I did sometimes find the back and forth between the two time periods confusing and I think some further editing was needed. But I found the story compelling. Frances also had a room full of the sins of basically everyone in town, which may come in useful in further books. I would definitely keep a look out for the next one! I'm giving this four out of five and I liked it. 

Pretty Little Thing by Kit Duffield - Review

I've read one of Chris Russell's Young Adult novels and I quite liked it so I signed up to his newsletter forever ago, and I was intrigued when he wrote that Kit Duffield is his new pen name and that this was the first novel under that name. I liked the premise of the book so I bought it and picked it up soon after it arrived. However, I don't think it really lived up to the premise which is a shame. I can't really pinpoint why, but I wouldn't rush to read something else under this name, unfortunately. 

Beckett Ryan is a writer who has been estranged from her parents for years and years. She grew up in a small seaside town where her dad was the headteacher at the local school. The house she grew up in was vast, but she suffered from night terrors and was not a happy child. Her parents seemed the very upstanding moral people that the town wanted them to be, but behind closed doors Beckett's dad was abusive towards her. 

Now both of her parents are dead, having died just a week apart from each other. Her dad was suffering from dementia and the surroundings of her mother's death are a bit cloudy. Beckett has to return to bury them and sort out the house. The house is worth somewhat of a fortune but there's a lot of stipulations in the will. Local gentry lady (I forget her name, because I'm reviewing this book a couple of weeks after I read it) wants to buy the house and turn it into a children's home in memory of Beckett's dad. Beckett clearly doesn't want this to happen but she's not exactly sure how to stop it.

Then there's Leanne. She turns up all bright eyed and stuff, telling Beckett that they used to be best friends and used to run around Beckett's house together. Beckett was sent off to boarding school aged nine, though, and she doesn't remember Leanne from before that at all. But it's obvious that Beckett has significant trauma from her childhood and her memories can't really be relied upon. 

The setting is really creepy and I liked the weird town and the town too, but I felt that the story overall was a bit confused. The ending came all in a rush and got a bit stupid for me. I'm giving this three out of five. 

The List by Yomi Adegoke - Review

 

I bought this book on a whim off Vinted alongside some other ones - I think I got five books for about £13, which was good. I love Vinted for books! They're so cheap! 

I am glad I took a chance on this and I am glad it exists as a book, but I'm not really sure it worked for me. That's fine, not all books are for all people. But I found it a bit of a slog and I would have liked it to end a little bit earlier than it did. 

So Ola is the heroine of the book. At the very beginning, she is less than a month from marrying her fiance, Michael. They are both somewhat famous, and are totally #couplegoals and Black aspiration. Ola is a journalist at a feminist magazine. Michael has just been hired by CuRated but up until now he's been a successful podcaster. He's been hired by CuRated because they've been called out for being so white and he's their diversity hire to prove that they're not racist. Similarly, Ola is "the Black one" in the magazine office, and her friend Kiran is "the Asian one" and Sophie is "the gay one". Ola seems to think that this is just the way life has to be for her to get ahead.

Anyway, on the morning of Michael's first day at CuRated, Ola wakes up to her best friends Ruth and Celie messaging her about a thing called The List. This is an open document which has named abusers and rapists in UK media, like a Me Too kind of thing. And Michael is on the list. It says that he is guilty of harassment (so not like the worst offences on the list, but even so) and that he has a restraining order against him. This is news to Ola and she obviously doesn't know what to do. 

She wants to believe Michael when he says he's innocent, but she is also a feminist and wants to believe women. Her editor Frankie asks her to write about The List for the magazine, but Ola clearly doesn't want to do that and is desperate to get the focus off herself at work. 

Now I think it's just really stupid that she just doesn't postpone the wedding until they decide what to do, but Ola keeps giving excuse after excuse. She wants Michael to prove that he didn't harass anyone but how do you prove a negative? She sets a private investigator on to him. 

Meanwhile, Michael is certain that he knows who is behind the accusations, and he is sure they aren't exactly true. He is really misogynistic though and as I read in someone else's review on Goodreads, I wish that he had undone his views just a little bit. For instance, near the end of the book there's a bit where he admits to himself that the number of people that Ola has slept with is too high for him, even though it's below his own 'colossal' number. Two of his friends are proper dicks, too, and he is complicit in their sexism a lot of the time and never calls them out. The fourth friend realllly needed better friends. I won't say that I disliked Michael's parts of the book, but he did annoy me. 

Ola, too, kept seeming to make stupid decisions and not for reasons that I could understand. There didn't seem to be enough good things about Michael to keep her coming back, and they had had their issues at the beginning of the relationship. I liked her relationships with her friends. 

I don't want to give spoilers so I won't say much more, but I did think the end was just a bit stupid. In all I'm giving this three and a half out of five. 

We Solve Murders by Richard Osman - Review

So here we are again on a book by Richard Osman, but a new series this time. This is the first book in the series and for a few reasons I don't think it works as well as the Thursday Murder Club. I swear I only read these books so that I can talk to my mum about them, and it turned out we were reading this at the same time. We went swimming in early October and she was about 70% of the way through it. I was about 74% through so we were close, and I actually finished it when we got home from swimming. Surprisingly, my mum wasn't enjoying it as much as she thought she might do! I can't wait to see what she says when she's finished it, because I think it did redeem itself a little bit at the end. 

The heroes of the book are Amy and Steve. Let's start with Amy. She's married to Steve's son, Adam, but the two of them lead very different lives currently. He is some kind of investment banker or something and he's in Singapore. She is a professional bodyguard/hitwoman, and currently she is working on a private island off South Carolina, looking after a very famous author called Rosie D'Antonio. A Russian baddie has put out a hit on Rosie so Amy is there to protect her. 

Steve is a widow living in the New Forest. His wife Debbie (who I don't think is Adam's mum) died fairly recently and he spends a lot of time talking to her and walking the streets late at night. He is an ex cop and he now has a small little life that he is kidding himself he is happy with. He goes to the pub quiz, he investigates lost cats and such as the like, he eats the same thing in the same pub every week, and he has his quiz team members as friends. That's it. 

Meanwhile, three influencers have been killed while on trips, and money left near their bodies. A man called Francois Loubet is behind it, but no one knows who he is or why he wanted them dead. But all were killed pretty near to where Amy was at any given time. Someone is trying to frame her, but why? 

Then there's Felicity, who runs a talent agency that is now being used as a front for money laundering and other nefarious business. She 'represented' the influencers that are now dead, but she completely doesn't understand what it is that her business is doing. To be honest, this felt a lot like Richard not understanding what influencers do and being disparaging towards them, but whatever. Fine. I did quite like this part of the story.

I also did like Amy and Steve. I didn't like Amy's relationship with Adam, but I suppose it was an easy way to get him out of the way. At the end of the book Amy and Steve decide to set up an agency together, which will of course lead to more books in the series. 

There are way too many characters and the book is needlessly complicated. I wish a good editor would just tell Richard to cut at least two threads and just leave it be. It's just too much. My mum's criticisms were that it wasn't always obvious who was speaking, which I do agree with - just put more 'he says' in, for goodness sake! - and that she didn't believe that Richard actually knows a lot about the world of organised crime and stuff like that. She thought he should write what he knows more! 

I will also say that it is just so TWEE. I get that Richard's entire thing is cosy crime, and that works when it's the Thursday Murder Club and they live in a retirement village and find themselves mixed up in things that they don't fully understand, but when it's Amy - a professional bodyguard who knows what's up - it just doesn't work properly. It's annoying. 

Anyway, I read it, as my mum wanted me to. I'm giving it three out of five. 

The Last Thing to Burn by Will Dean - Review

I can't remember where I heard of this book, but I did, and I bought it secondhand in May. Maybe I heard about it at the writing conference I went to in early May. I bought it from eBay for a few quid and I picked it up in September just after my holiday. 

It is a really grim and gruesome book and I'm left not really sure how I feel about it. I can see why it's really compelling and I just had to keep reading, but I'm sort of uncomfortable. It feels a lot like torture porn, and I'm not sure that this author was the right person to write this. The comparisons to Room and Misery are really apt... but I sort of feel like the world has moved on a bit since both those books. Even Room is fourteen years old now. 

The protagonist is Jane. Her name is not Jane, though. Her name is Thanh Dao and she is a Vietnamese national who was trafficked to England with promises of a good life and money to send back to her family. She was with her sister, Kim-Ly. Thanh ended up being imprisoned by Leonard on his desolate fenland farm in Norfolk or Linncolnshire, something like that. At the very beginning of the book she tries to escape by walking miles and miles to a road. However, he catches her, and as punishment he burns one of her final posessions. When she arrived, she had seventeen. She is now just down to four. One of them is the sheaf of letters from her sister. Kim-Ly is working in Manchester in a nail salon and Thanh knows that she isn't far off paying off her debt to the men who trafficked her; all that Thanh has to do is keep with Lenn for a couple more years and then Kim-Ly will be free, and then Thanh doesn't really care what happens to her then. She has already been a prisoner here for seven years. 

She has a disabled foot. After a previous escape attempt, Lenn broke her ankle with a pair of bolt cutters and it has healed badly. Thanh can't run and can only walk by dragging her foot behind her. She lives in constant pain and Lenn keeps her drugged with horse tranquilisers. He is a complete monster; I don't think that can be emphasised enough. Everything she does is observed, everything she does wrong is punished. He rapes her repeatedly. Near the beginning of the book she realises she is pregnant. Thanh has tried to escape and tried everything she can think of to escape, but hasn't ever been able to. 

A woman called Cynthia arrives one day, asking if she can rent one of Lenn's fields for her horse. Thanh is terrified, but is this the catalyst that she needs to escape? 

I liked the setting of the book - I could imagine the flat countryside with very little traffic and with nowhere for Thanh to run to. I liked Thanh and wanted her to succeed. I understood why she had come to England and felt sorry for her. I won't give any more details of the book because I think they would be spoilers, but a lot happens. 

However, as I said, I do think parts of the book were just sordid and gruesome for the sake of it. Room does this better, maybe because it is from the point of view of a child. I felt like the author was labouring the point a bit, and the end of the book too, even though the book is barely 250 pages so not long at all. I'm also not sure that a white man like Will Dean was the right person to write the story of a trafficked Vietnamese woman. It makes me feel uncomfortable. For those reasons, I can only give this three out of five. 

Fat Girl Best Friend by Sarah Grant - Review

I got this book in a swap recently. It had been on my wish list so I was excited to read it, but it didn't really meet up with my expectations. 

To be clear, I have been involved in the fat acceptance movement for well over a decade, and I love the non fiction writing that has cropped up over the last however many years so I was keen to read this too. But for me, it was just a bit old news. I have been here so long that I've heard all these critiques before. I mentioned this to two friends who are also fat and who are also in the movement, and they agreed that for us it's just not new, but that it may be for some people. And I agree, so if some people do need to read this book and would get a lot out of it, I can't really diss it too much. 

Basically, it looks at the 'fat girl best friend' in TV shows and films and explores the tropes that the fat side character endures. She's never the main character, she never gets to have her own wishes and wants, she is often either over sexualised or isn't allowed to be sexual at all, she is just the friend of the Thin Main Character. There are lots of examples given but the ones people are often more familiar with are Fat Monica in Friends and Fat Amy in Pitch Perfect. (And it's actually really problematic that both these women are nicknamed 'Fat', for god's sake). But as I say, there was a lot of new information for me. 

Things I did like were: the fact that some of the women who are depicted as 'fat' in Hollywood are actually just 'entertainment thin', and what that means, and I also really liked the look at Paula in Crazy Ex Girlfriend because generally that show does so well at representation and I liked Paula when I watched the show. 

I did find there were parts of it that weren't proofread properly which I found annoying, and there were some parts of it that were just plain wrong. For instance, it said that the film Frozen was released in 2019. No, it was not. I don't even like the film and I know that. This made me feel like not enough care was taken over the book, and that disappointed me. 

In all I'm giving this three out of five. I will donate it somewhere I think, and will hope that someone else will get more out of it that I did. 

The Four by Ellie Keel - Review

So I hated this book. I wanted to finish it because I was already invested, but it was four hundred and forty pages of my life that I will never get back, and I am cross about it. 

I can't remember where I came across it, but I must have, somewhere, because I added it to my hold list at the library. However, this was a while ago so I had totally forgotten why I ordered it. It's touted as 'dark academia' which it really isn't, it fails at that completely in my opinion. It is also supposedly adult fiction but honestly it reads more like Young Adult and should have been marketed as such. 

I know a couple of people who really liked this book but I just really couldn't. It just kept going and it just didn't stop. I have barely any redeeming thoughts about it but let me tell you about it anyway.

The book is set at High Realms, an exclusive fee paying school in Devon. Four students from poorer backgrounds have been given scholarships, back in 1999. They are Rose, Marta, Lloyd, and Sami. Rose is the protagonist of the book and it's all from her point of view. She has left her dad in London. He drives a cab. Her mum died three years ago. She and Marta share a room in the top of the school, Room 1A. Marta's dad is a professor and she has been homeschooled until now. Lloyd was brought up in care and Sami is from Leeds, although his parents are both in the medical field I am pretty sure. 

Right from the beginning the rest of the school hates the four 'millennium scholars'. They are ostracised by their peers and by the teachers, except for the school counsellor, Dr Reza. They are picked on and bullied, especially by the "Senior Patrol" who are prefects, including Genevieve and Sylvia. Gin's boyfriend, Max, does somewhat take to the four of them and Rose has a huge crush on him. However, everyone else hates them. So for a start, do you really want me to buy that an entire sixth form is picking on four kids they don't know, without stopping, for weeks and weeks on end, and that not only do all the teachers know, that they are actually endorsing it? Come on. Private schools are bad but it's just so heavy handed. 

Something happens which means Marta needs to rely on the three others - her only friends - for her survival. And then terrible things keep happening and keep happening, and it just goes on and on and on. I was hoping there would be some kind of twist or redemption which would make the whole rest of it worth it, but unfortunately not. 

There is a sapphic love story which again comes out of nowhere and which also includes one of the bullies, which again makes no sense because why is Rose so forgiving? For a few kisses and some sex? Come on. 

None of the main four characters are sympathetic, or really fleshed out enough for the reader to care. The school is needlessly complicated, not only in terms of geography but in terms of everything else, too. The ending was not at all worth it. I'm giving this one star.  

Keedie by Elle McNicoll - Review

I've never read anything by Elle McNicoll before, but I know of her books and I know that she writes a lot of autistic characters, which is interesting for me as I'm autistic myself. I started to watch the TV show of A Kind of Spark and really need to start it again and finish it, actually. So I know who Keedie is - she's the elder sister of Addie who stars in A Kind of Spark. I liked her in the TV show a lot; she reminded me of myself. So I added this book to my wishlist and I got sent it recently and picked it up soon afterwards. I loved it so much that I've now bought A Kind of Spark and want to read it soon, and you can count me in the fan club. 

So yes this book is about Keedie. She's thirteen and she's got a twin, Nina. The two used to be close but since they turned thirteen Keedie feels like Nina has gone to a different planet. All she cares about is boys and make up and stuff. Keedie feels a chasm growing between them. Nina is neurotypical and Keedie is autistic and that does explain some of the gap between them, but not all. 

Keedie also has a huge sense of justice - common in autistic people - and she metes out some justice of her own against a bully. Someone asks her to do the same for their bully, and Keedie realises she can make money out of bullying the bullies. I loved this about her and felt for her a lot. 

Addie is only six in this book and she hasn't been diagnosed as autistic yet, but she totally is. Keedie buys her a book about sharks which goes down really well with Addie. I loved the relationship between the two of them and how it blossomed throughout the book. 

I really liked this, obviously, and I'm giving it four out of five. I'll get to the next book soon! 

Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter? by Nicci French - Review

On the last day of my holiday we couldn't do a lot except sit around, and then we had a long transfer via coach back to the airport, so I had a lot of time to read. I picked this up and probably wouldn't have if I'd known it was over 500 pages long. But then I had so much time to read that I ended up getting really into it and I read it in just a couple of days. So thank you to the long book for keeping me company while I travelled! 

I had this book recommended by my friend Janet, who often posts recommendations of books that are just a pound or two on Kindle. I often end up buying a couple! I read something by Nicci French absolutely forever ago, and didn't really like it, but that was honestly like about twenty years ago so I was probably overdue to give them a try again (Nicci French is the pen name of a husband and wife team, if you didn't know). I have seen that this is the first book in a series about the detective who appears at the end, Maud, and I would definitely read another book with her in because I really liked her. 

The first part of the book is set in the early 90s, I think. Alec Salter is turning fifty and is throwing a party. The family lives in Suffolk. His wife is Charlotte. Everyone loves her. They have four children - Niall, Paul, Ollie, and Etty. She is only fifteen when the party happens. Charlotte never turns up, though. Alec isn't concerned but Etty is. The party happens. Etty and Ollie (it might be spelt Olly, sorry) walk around looking for Charlotte, but don't find her. 

In the coming days the family does take it more seriously. The police come and suspicion falls on Alec. It's true that he and Charlotte didn't always have the greatest relationship. Her coat is found in the river which makes Etty realise she must be dead. 

The family is friends with another family in the village - dad Duncan, agoraphobic and chronically depressed wife Francesca, and sons Greg and Morgan. Greg and Etty go out on Christmas Day, a couple of weeks after Charlotte's disappearance, and discover Duncan's body. There were rumours that he and Charlotte were having an affair and the police quickly agree. They think Duncan killed her and then himself, and they declare the case closed.

Etty, though, never accepts this version of events. As soon as she can she leaves the family and is rarely back. But then it's twenty five years later and Alec is suffering from dementia and the Salter children have gathered at his house ready to sell it and all of his stuff and move him into a home. He often thinks that Etty is Charlotte and Etty thinks he will confess to her murder. Morgan, meanwhile, is a film maker now and he starts a podcast about the events that happened with his dad and Charlotte. Lots of things come to light and it is obvious that the police in the original investigation basically bumbled the whole thing. 

Hence why Maud is invited down! She lives and works in London but she comes to Suffolk to work on the case. I really liked her. I liked the setting, too. I could imagine it really well. The one thing I didn't quite get fully was Charlotte herself - but it's easy to see why because Etty kind of idolises her and obviously because she's young she doesn't know her mother as an adult. 

I felt for so many of the people in this book. I found it really intriguing and just really wanted to know what happened. I'm giving it five out of five because it kept me so engrossed! 

The Fells by Cath Staincliffe - Review

Thank you so much to Joffe Books for giving me access to this book via Netgalley! I cam across it while browsing and was intrigued, so I was pleased to be able to read it. I was provided with an electronic copy of this book for review purposes but was not otherwise compensated for this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own. 

I love detective fiction but I hadn't come across Cath Staincliffe before. This is her first book in the series with these detectives, but she has other books with other officers and I would be interested in picking one of those up. I would also definitely read more in this series, I hope to see one soon! 

The detectives are Leo, who is fifty something, happily married, and good at his job. His son, though, is causing a bit of worry because he's quite right wing and racist and stuff like that. Leo and his wife don't know what to do with him. 

Shan is new to the department I think, she's definitely new to Leo. She's married to a woman and she's pregnant with their first child. She tells Leo this straight away but is keen to get stuck into her new job.

And the job is this: a potholer has found a skeleton in a cave and Leo thinks it must be the bones of a young woman called Vicky who went missing in the late 90s. She was in the area with friends, at a festival, when she went missing, and was never found. It was commonly thought that she was another victim of a serial killer in the area, although he always denied it. She left a note saying she was going to watch the sunrise, but was never seen again. Two of her friends have stayed in touch with her mother, who desperately wants to know what happened to Vicky and to bury her properly. 

Leo and Shan - who has Chinese heritage, although she's adopted - get to work going over the cold case. 

I was worried in case this book was a bit too close to something by J R Ellis - there's even one of his about a body found in a cave in the Yorkshire Dales - but I shouldn't have worried. This story felt fresh and new and I liked how the mystery was solved. I liked the parts set in the 90s, too, and I liked Leo and Shan and want to know what's in store for them in the future. As you can see from the photo I was reading this while on holiday and it was perfect holiday reading for me! I'm giving it four out of five. 

The Housemaid by Freida McFadden - Review

I have seen a few people reading this book and I was intrigued, so I looked it up on Amazon and found all three books on Kindle for only a few quid so I bought them. I'll read the next two soon I think because I liked this and found it really compelling. In the most I like books that keep me engaged and that I want to finish reading, and this definitely fulfilled that brief. I don't think any of the characters are particularly likeable. I knew there was a twist in this book and it really didn't disappoint - I didn't expect it at all. That's the mark of a good book for me - I've read a lot of books and can often predict what is coming, but I didn't predict this at all. 

The hero of the book is Millie. She has recently been parolled from prison and is desperate to get her life back on track. She applies for a job as a housemaid with the Winchesters. She will be a live in cook and cleaner and will help to take care of their daughter, Cecelia. She somehow doubts that she will pass the background check but to her surprise, she is offered the job. The Winchesters live in a huge house and clearly have a lot of money. Millie's room is in the attic, and to her shock, her room only locks from the outside. 

Straight away she comes up against Nina, the woman of the house. Nina is exacting, wanting things doing to her exact specifications and finding fault with Millie at every turn. Her daughter, too, refuses to eat what Millie has prepared and then says she is allergic to peanuts - so then why is there a huge jar of peanut butter in the pantry? Nina says she told Millie, but Millie is certain she didn't. This is just one example of the weirdness within the house.

But Millie has nowhere else to go. She was sleeping in her car before this and she needs a job. She also likes Nina's husband, Andy. He's dashing and very charming and she wonders what he sees in a woman like Nina. 

There are murmurings about how ill Nina was when Cecelia was born, and how she's 'nuts' now, and how no one thinks Millie will hack the job. There's also the hot gardener, Enzo, who speaks little English but who seems to be trying to warn Millie away from the job and the family. 

As I said I thought the twist was excellent and I can see what might happen in the next books. I'll have to get to them soon. I'm giving this four out of five. 

The Light Between Us by Elaine Chiew - Review and Blog Tour

Hello! Welcome back to my blog for my belated stop on the tour for The Light Between Us by Elaine Chiew. As I explained previously, I didn't get chance to read and review this book before I went away on holiday. I was reading it when I left so it accompanied me on my aeroplane ride and the first couple of days of my holiday, and it was perfect reading for that! I haven't ever read a book like this before so I'm so glad I joined in the tour!

So, in the present day, Charlene, known as Charlie, is living in Singapore. She grew up there but studied in the US. She works as an archivist. Her family is complicated - her dad had three wives before he died. Her mother, his first wife, is also dead. Charlie and her mother lived in London for a while. Her first stepmother is still around and controlling the family fortune as well as the family in general. She has two sons. She also owns the family compound; Charlie lives in a lodge also on the property. Her dad's third wife, Peony, had a son, Sebastian, who Charlie met at university and is now best friends with. They are the outcasts in the family and there's clearly a lot of trauma around their family and their stepmother. 

In 1920, Tian Wei is a photographer in Singapore, although he's from the mainland. He is concerned about his friend, Aiko, who has gone missing. Through some kind of slip in time, his letter appears in a digital folder of Charlie's, and she replies to him. 

They strike up a friendship and then a romance through time. The time isn't linear, though - what is only a couple of days to Charlie is weeks and then months for Tian Wei. I knew the book couldn't end happily but I thought what happened was perfect, it was just such a lovely romance. I liked Charlie a lot and really felt for her - she's an orphan trying to just live her life but her stepmother and her half brothers were just terrible people who seemed to like to make her miserable and to manipulate her. I thought the depiction of modern Singapore was brilliant, showing the difficulties between tradition and modernity. 

Likewise, I like Tian Wei and his world too. Singapore in the 1920s is not something I knew anything about so I liked learning about the place and about the differences between the mainland Chinese people and Singapore nationals. Plus by the end of Tian Wei's story, the Japanese occupation is about to happen which casts a long shadow over his story too. 

The romance is really lovely and believable. I'm so glad I read this and I would definitely read something else by the same author. I'm giving this four out of five. Thank you for having me along! 

Out of Bounds by Val McDermid - Review

After I read the first Karen Pirie book recently I realised I actually really liked her - I don't like some of Val's other series - so when I came across three more of the Karen Pirie books while on an afternoon out in Holmfirth I bought them. They were only a couple of quid each so I did well! This is the fourth one in the series and there's a massive spoiler for something that must have happened in book two or three, but I don't really care about that and I'll get around to them eventually. I made my mum read the first one and she really enjoyed it, but she says she needs to read them in order! So I will lend this to her at some point. 

Karen is DCI of the Historic Crimes Unit, which looks at cold cases, and in this book the unit has been moved to Edinburgh. She is going through something - which I won't spoil - and she's taken to walking around late at night, where she meets some Syrian asylum seekers. This is one small strand of the book which I actually really liked. 

But the main case she is looking at is the rape and murder of Tina Macdonald twenty years ago. No one was ever caught for her murder. But then some lads get into a joyride and the driver ends up in a coma. When his DNA is matched against the database, it turns out that Tina's murderer must have been a close male relative of his. Problem is: Ross Garvie was adopted and he doesn't know about it, and his records are sealed. Karen has to go to court for the right to access the records. I found that really interesting actually. 

She also meets a friend of hers who is a social worker, and while she's there, a detective is looking into the death of a man called Gabriel. At first it was considered suicide, and then a murder, but then Karen's colleague has decided it is a suicide after all and is basically ready to shut the case. But Karen's interest is piqued. It turns out that Gabriel's mother, Caroline, was killed in a place explosion over Scotland twenty five years ago. Flying the plane was an MP who had been outspoken about the IRA, so the death was thought to be terrorist activity. But no one was ever caught and no one ever took responsibility. Karen doesn't like coincidences so she starts looking into the old case as well as Gabriel's death too. 

Her colleague in the unit, Jamie Murray, is nice enough but a bit dim. Karen needs to train him. She also struggles with her superiors because she is just such a maverick which yes is a huge cliche in crime novels but I like her so I just can't be cross about it. 

In all I really liked this and I found it really compelling so I will probably pick the others up soon. I'm giving this four out of five. 

A Terrible Kindness by Jo Browning Wroe - Review

This book was my choice for book club this year. I saw it while browsing in WH Smith or something last year, but didn't pick it up. But I thought it would be good for book club so chose it. I am writing this review before the book club meeting so I am intrigued as the what people will think. This is partly because the book didn't go how I thought it would at all. It wasn't that I disliked it, but the blurb doesn't quite match up to the actual narrative.

The main character is called Will. At the very beginning of the book he is nineteen and he has just qualified as an embalmer. He is at a fancy dinner with his girlfriend, Gloria, when the whole room - all embalmers celebrating - get the news that the Aberfan disaster has happened. Some volunteer embalmers are required to go to south Wales and help with the clean up of the bodies. Will volunteers and sets off from his home. He will be the closest he has been to his mother in five years, as she lives in Swansea. It's not clear why he is estranged from her for quite a while, but it becomes clear. 

The book splits off into different narratives in different time periods. It isn't confusing to follow but I'm not quite sure it was the right decision to make as the author, but I will take each strand separately.

First of all there's Aberfan itself. If you're not familiar, the disaster was that a coal spoil tip slid - after three weeks of rain - down the hillside into the school and into some houses. About 150 people died, including something like 116 children. It happened at about 9.15am so the kids had just arrived for the day. Hundreds of people - mostly miners - turned up to help pull bodies from the slurry, which solidified as it stopped moving, and their bodies were taken to two local chapels nearby. There really were embalmers who came over to help, including some from Ireland who also brought dozens of tiny coffins for the children. Will is a fictional version of these men and the story here is absolutely harrowing. I hadn't ever really thought about the trauma that the bodies must have gone through before being found. It took days for them to find all the bodies, and no survivors were found after 11am on the day of the disaster. It's something that I am interested in so I picked the book on this basis.

It is clear that Will suffers PTSD after his work in Aberfan, and really that's what the book is about. He marries Gloria but tells her that he doesn't want children because of what he saw small bodies go through. He suffers from nightmares and flashbacks. Reading this from a modern perspective is really interesting, actually.

But he also has PTSD from other events in his life, if you want my opinion. His dad and his dad's twein brother, Robert, were funeral directors, along with Robert's partner - in the business and sexual sense - Howard. Will's dad wants him to follow in the family business but his mother, Evelyn, is against it. She's quite jealous of the relationship that Will has with his uncle and Howard. Will's dad dies when he about eight years old. A couple of years later, Will is off to chorister school in Cambridge. He has a beautiful voice although later, as an adult, he rarely sings anymore because of his traumas. At the school he meets Martin, but it's clear he has become estranged from Martin, too. His uncle and Howard love him like their own, but they don't know what he went through in Aberfan.

I feel like Aberfan was just kind of a useful tool to show someone's trauma, which kind of annoyed me. I wonder what other people in my book club will think. I did like the book, though, and I'm giving it four out of five.